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The Arizona Supreme Court upheld a law on Tuesday that imposes imprisonment of up to five years on anyone who executes a surgical or chemical abortion in the state, except to save the life of the child’s mother.
The law, first enacted in 1864, effectively outlaws abortion beginning at conception except to save the mother. It was put on hold after the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling but became the center of attention again shortly after Dobbs v. Jackson.
The same year the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision tossing Roe, the Arizona legislature and then-Gov. Doug Ducey worked together to pass a law allowing abortions up to 15 weeks gestation but noted it would not supersede the previous law.
The Arizona Court of Appeals claimed in a ruling later that year that, despite both laws’ strict limits on abortion, a “harmonized” version allowed for abortion through 15 weeks “when provided by licensed physicians in compliance with the state’s other laws and regulations.”
The Arizona Supreme Court, however, found on Tuesday that “the legislature has demonstrated its consistent design to restrict elective abortion to the degree permitted by the Supremacy Clause and an unwavering intent since 1864 to proscribe elective abortions absent a federal constitutional right—precisely what it intended and accomplished.”
“To date, our legislature has never affirmatively created a right to, or independently authorized, elective abortion. We defer, as we are constitutionally obligated to do, to the legislature’s judgment, which
